


nothing is lost that is born of the heart

by colonelcatastrophe



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 11:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colonelcatastrophe/pseuds/colonelcatastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt Murdock has learned to show his affection in a variety of ways, depending on the intended recipient. Sometimes it ends well. Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes, he's not so sure he's acting out of affection at all. </p>
<p>i. father; ii. friend; iii. lover; iv. city</p>
<p>No pairings, though mentions of past Matt/Elektra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing is lost that is born of the heart

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Daredevil, Matty, or any other characters, obviously. 
> 
> Full disclosure, I wrote this for a roleplay monthly writing prompt challenge, since I play Matt on a S.H.I.E.L.D. university AU tumblr rp. The prompt was "affection," but I thought this turned out rather well, so I figured I'd put it here, too.

“never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.” -basil rathbone

i. father

Jack Murdock was never an openly emotional man, but Matt always knew he cared. Jack cared by pressuring him to fight with his wits, not his fists; by standing up for himself and the little guys, not letting them beat him down; by sitting at the kitchen table and helping Matt struggle over algebra problems by the dim fluorescent light overhead even though it was midnight and he had a black eye and a killer migraine.

When he could, Matt tried to return the favor. He kept the apartment as clean as he could, so his father didn’t have to worry about it. Whenever Jack returned from a fight in the ring, Matt had a microwaved tv dinner ready for him when he walked back through the door. And even though he was nauseated by the smell of blood, Matt always gently stitched up his father when the fights were rougher than usual. He echoed the way affection was shown to him - in small gestures, in kind comfort, and in unspoken appreciation.

(Until his father was shot and left for dead in the middle of an alley. Later, when Matt tracked down the Fixer, the man who he knew had orchestrated his father’s murder, there was no affection in his heart. But the Fixer had shown none to him.)

ii. friend

Matt didn’t know how to react to Franklin Nelson. At first just roommates in undergrad, then occasional study partners, it slowly grew into the closest friendship Matt had ever had. It was a strange thing, the relationship between Matt and Foggy. Foggy would move the furniture around just to convince Matt that he wouldn’t obnoxiously treat him like an invalid, but the first time Matt tripped over a purposefully misplaced side table, Foggy was the one who brought him ice, spewing waterfalls of genuine apologies. He dragged Matt out to smoke-filled bars and crowded, hormone-flooded house parties to make sure he got the full “college experience,” but Matt ended up drunk and confused and overstimulated, trying to find the right bus to take home by himself at the end of the night (Foggy was always contrite the next morning, promising it would never happen again, though it always did). He had no problems sneakily turning off Matt’s Sunday morning alarm to force him to sleep through Mass when he was exhausted and needed it, or singlehandedly deciding that they would pay extra rent (that they didn’t have) to snag a first-floor room their second year of college, only because Matt always “fell down the stairs.”

Foggy didn’t always make the best decisions, but Matt knew that he was really just trying to do what he thought would be in his best interest. Foggy was always there for him, in his own way, so it was Matt’s duty to do the same. He brought Foggy coffee and toast when he was overstressed and forgot to eat. During finals week, he chucked balls of paper across the room to hit Foggy in the face when he detected snoring instead of the studious sound of notes flipping. When he could tell that the girl two rows down in their civil procedure class always had an increased heartbeat when Foggy went up to give presentations, Matt slyly orchestrated for the two of them to run into her in the hallway after class. Nelson and Murdock: full support in every way it counted. 

(Even when Foggy drunkenly professed his appreciation for whatever help Matt had given him recently, Matt felt comfortable responding to him in kind: “What if we never met? I’d be so screwed. Every day I thank the roommate gods. I love you, man;” “Same here. Love you too, Foggy.”)

iii. lover

Matt didn’t even entertain the notion of romance until undergrad. In high school, he’d been too focused on his academics, on his training with Stick, and on getting his overstimulated senses under control. Once in college, he was certainly let down by what cupid had in store for him. Most women saw him as either a kicked puppy dog who needed coddling or a burden too bothersome to bear. Matt didn’t waste his time with either. But once in a blue moon, he’d find someone who he connected with, and who unexplainedly saw something special in him.

Only one relationship really progressed past casual meetings. Her name was Elektra, and she treated him like he had something to offer, when his mind was tied up with school and vigilante extracurriculars and his ever-present sense of guilt. Though he couldn’t see her, he learned that she was beautiful in all the ways that mattered. She was whip-smart, and sarcastic, and she had one type of laugh that sounded like wind chimes and another that sounded like sick goats. Both laughs were perfect in their own ways. A little old-fashioned, Matt brought Elektra flowers, took her out to dinner. On her birthday, he bought train tickets to take her to the country outside of the city, just for one night, so they could lie in the grass and she could see the stars and he could listen to her describe them. And whenever they made love, he kissed her gently, his sensitive fingers skimming over her skin, touching her in all the right places. She made him happy, and she helped him believe that maybe he could be more than a man trapped in the darkness. All Matt could do was hope that he made her happy too.

Then her father was assassinated, and she dropped out of school and left New York. Matt couldn’t blame her. He would have done the same. But he had loved her, and she’d taken that love with her when she fled. After she left, he didn’t bother much more with serious romance. After all, in this world, it was impossible for anyone to stay together. He wasn’t bitter - that’s just the way it was, and he accepted it. He’d learned his lesson. Still, he never regretted his relationship with her, and at least he always had the memories. 

(He still worries about Elektra sometimes, part of him hoping that they weren’t actually as similar as he had always hoped. A separate part of him also hopes that she was able to achieve the revenge she left to seek. Both parts agreed that whatever the outcome, she probably ended up as splintered as he had become. Maybe they could compare notes if they ever meet again.)

iv. city

It didn’t make sense, to feel so much allegiance to a place that never showed Matt any kind of affection. Hell’s Kitchen ate his father and spit him back out, beaten and bloody and, eventually, shot full of bullet holes. In the time that Matt spent there as a child, he was roughed up and bullied, hit by a truck, blinded, and nearly impoverished. Life in the Kitchen was hard, and bitter, and unforgiving.

But the people weren’t. They were just doing what they could to get by, like Jack had done, like Matt does now. There were good people out there who deserved to be safe. And for all of its horrors, the Kitchen also held treasures not found anywhere else. There was the Mexican bakery down the street, the smell of its sweet bread wafting down the alleyways every morning before the sun rose. There were the children from St. Agnes that were corralled into singing Christmas carols down the street while polluted snow fell from the sky, still carrying hope in their voices even after the world tried to beat it out of them. There were the single mothers working hard to keep their kids well-cared for, widowed elderly men who played chess in the alley behind the barbershop to keep each other company, high school graduates ready to go out and take on the world, because after surviving eighteen years in the Kitchen, no other obstacles could possibly get in their way. It wasn’t that Matt saw the city through a metaphorical pair of rose-colored glasses. But he knew, deep down, that Hell’s Kitchen was a place that could be so much more, if only someone took a stand against its crime-riddled streets.

Matt Murdock was a gentle soul at heart, still the boy his father had raised to fight with his mind and not his fists. But it was too much to bear, the layer upon layer of crime and destruction and corruption; the injustices that haunted the streets enraged him every night he lay awake in his Columbia dorm room. The shouting of a young man getting mugged, the quickened pace of a woman being followed home, the children who cried themselves to sleep because their father beat their mother - Matt heard it all. But it didn’t have to be this way. He couldn’t do nothing, not when he had the ability to help. So out of the affection he felt for his community, he taped up his knuckles, put on his black mask, and slipped out the window of his dorm to deal out his own form of justice. This was what he was made for, after all.

(And if it wasn’t completely altruistic, if he got something out of it for himself, too - if he couldn’t help but give in to the fighting, the intoxicating feeling of adrenaline in his veins, the righteous anger in his fists, the satisfying sound of shattering bones - no one would ever know the difference.)


End file.
